Re: Addition of CmdSN in Data-out PDU

[Paul Koning <pkoning@jlc.net>]

Excerpt of message (sent 10 October 2001) by Julian Satran:
> Inconsistency can be legitimate. CmdSN is ephemeral. It can be reused, it 
> may have large holes and using it in an implementation is as bad as a 
> hashed index.

Not true.

CmdSN values are sequential, by definition.  Yes, clearly there will
be small holes because commands complete out of order.  But "large"
holes are unlikely.

In any case, the target has control over that.  I can use an array
whose size is given by the number of pending commands times a
correction factor to account for the likely density of holes.  Then
MaxCmdSN would be updated based on two considerations: the ability to
handle more pending commands, and the need to keep the distance
between oldest (lowest) still active CmdSN and MaxCmdSN bounded by the
size of the lookup array.

So having CmdSN in the DataOut PDU allows this approach, thereby
replacing a hash lookup on a rapidly changing ID space by a simple
array indexing operation.  Without CmdSN, you're forced to use a
mechanism that has a lot more overhead (in the insert/remove or in the
lookup, depending on the mechanism chosen).

	paul